While 1000’s of cities and counties have banded collectively to sue opioid makers and distributors in a federal court, one other group of plaintiffs has began to sue on their very own: hospitals.
Hundreds of hospitals have joined in a handful of lawsuits in state courts, seeing the state-based fits as their greatest hope for profitable significant settlement cash.
“The expense of treating overdose and opioid-addicted patients has skyrocketed, straining the resources of hospitals throughout our state,” mentioned Lee Bond, CEO of Singing River Health System in Mississippi in an announcement. His hospital is a part of a lawsuit in Mississippi.
Hospitals might uncover downsides to getting concerned in litigation, mentioned Paul Keckley, an impartial well being analyst.
“The drug manufacturers are a soft target,” he mentioned. But the invasive nature of litigation might generate “some unflattering attention” for hospitals, he added. They’d doubtless have to show over confidential particulars about how they set costs, in addition to their relationships with drug corporations.
So, regardless of representing the entrance strains of the opioid epidemic, most hospitals have been hesitant to pile on.
Just about each emergency room has dealt with opioid overdoses, which price hospitals billions of dollars a year, since so most of the sufferers haven’t any insurance coverage. But that’s simply the beginning. There are additionally uninsured sufferers, like Traci Grimes of Nashville, who find yourself spending weeks being handled for critical infections associated to their IV drug use.
“As soon as I got to the hospital, I had to be put on an ice bath,” Grimes mentioned of her bout with endocarditis over the summer time, when micro organism discovered its strategy to her coronary heart. “I thought I was going to die, literally. And they said I wasn’t very far away from death.”
Grimes is in restoration from her opioid dependancy however nonetheless getting her power again after spending a month being handled by means of a particular intravenous line to her coronary heart at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Most sufferers could possibly be despatched residence with a PICC line, however not somebody with a historical past of illicit IV drug use who might misuse it to inject different substances. Vanderbilt and different educational medical facilities acknowledge the issue and have established special clinics to handle these advanced sufferers.
Grimes, 37, mentioned she’s grateful for the care she acquired, which included a number of procedures and therapy for pneumonia, hepatitis A and hepatitis C. But like most sufferers in her state of affairs, she’s uninsured and strapped for money.
“I can’t pay a thing. I don’t have a dime,” she mentioned. “So they do absorb all that cost.”
Hospitals estimate treating difficult sufferers like Grimes prices a mean of $107,000 per particular person, in line with court docket paperwork. The complete prices to U.S. hospitals in a single 12 months, 2012, exceeded $15 billion, in line with a report cited in the suits. And most sufferers both couldn’t pay or have been lined by authorities insurance coverage packages.
The expense is a number one cause cited by the hospitals who’ve banded collectively in a handful of lawsuits in Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia. These fits are separate from the consolidated federal case in Ohio that features cities and counties across the nation. But essentially the most distinguished hospitals in these states, like Vanderbilt, have opted to not be part of the litigation.
West Virginia University President E. Gordon Gee, who oversees the state’s largest hospital system, has been urging others to affix the fits. He and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich established an organization meant to spotlight the hurt completed to hospitals by the opioid disaster.
“I think the more hospitals we have that want to be involved in this in some way, the better off we are,” he mentioned. “You know, there’s always safety in mass.”
By “safety,” Gee acknowledged a central concern for hospitals weighing the chance versus reward of going to court docket. They might have the tables turned on them by the pharmaceutical corporations since, till not too long ago, sufferers within the hospital have been often prescribed large quantities of opioids, contributing to the epidemic.
“I suspect there are some hospitals … who are afraid that if they get into it, those who are on the defense side will point out, well, maybe hospitals were really the problem,” he mentioned.
The lead defendant within the fits, Purdue Pharma, didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Gee mentioned hospitals can declare they have been victims of doubtful opioid advertising.
Still, many high-profile hospitals are sitting out the lawsuits, despite the fact that they’re sometimes those that deal with essentially the most difficult and costly sufferers.
Health analyst Keckley mentioned if hospitals be part of the litigation, they could be pressured to cough up precise totals for his or her opioid-related monetary damages. That might power hospitals to disclose how way more they cost for some providers, in contrast with the precise prices of offering the care.
“Hospitals basically have charged based on their own calculations and the underlying cost of delivering that care has been virtually nontransparent,” Keckley mentioned. “Then you open a whole new can of worms.”
Big educational medical facilities particularly, Keckler mentioned, have relationships with drugmakers that they could not need publicly highlighted.
Still, hospitals may profit with out having to place their names on lawsuits and exposing themselves to danger. In Oklahoma, the state won an early opioid lawsuit in August. The payout doesn’t direct cash to hospitals, per se. However, Patti Davis, president of the Oklahoma Hospital Association, mentioned they’re comfortable to see among the cash was earmarked for therapy.
“When we see treatment, we get very excited because it’s our hospitals providing a lot of the treatment,” she mentioned.
But nationally, hospitals can’t rely on potential settlement cash to trickle all the way down to their backside strains, mentioned Don Barrett, a Mississippi litigator serving to hospitals sue in state courts.
Two a long time in the past, when the goal of litigation was Big Tobacco, Barrett was working for states. He mentioned hospitals didn’t take part, to his shock. And when the states gained these fits and began getting paid damages, hospitals missed out. Only a few third of the cash was even spent on well being or tobacco management, according to one watchdog’s estimate.
“I guess they thought that the states were going to take care of them, that these local governments were going to take this money and give it to the hospitals where it would do some good,” he mentioned. “Of course, they didn’t give them a damn penny.”
Some states did set up trust funds which may assist sufferers within the hospital give up smoking. But many are utilizing the money to fill potholes, pay lecturers and in any other case shut gaps in state budgets.
Though not detailed within the lawsuits, most of the collaborating hospitals are in various ranges of monetary misery, and never at all times primarily due to the opioid epidemic. Facilities owned by Community Health Systems make up a big share of the hospitals suing in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. The investor-owned hospital chain, primarily based in Franklin, Tenn., has been struggling principally because of an outsize debt load taken on throughout a fast interval of enlargement.
A CHS spokesperson declined to remark, citing a coverage to not discuss pending litigation.
But Barrett mentioned he expects extra hospitals to affix the trigger relatively than counting on states to find out how settlement cash is spent.
“We’re not going to allow that to happen this time,” he mentioned. “We can’t afford to allow it to happen this time.”
This story is a part of a partnership that features Nashville Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
